Tuesday, November 20, 2018

FATHER FÉLIX VARELA & THE IRISH IN NEW YORK

FATHER FÉLIX VARELA &
THE IRISH IN NEW YORK

Plaque at the Church of the Transfiguration

Father
Felix Varela became the advocate for the Irish immigrants in New York from the
1830s to 1850s. He was exiled to New York from Cuba because of his passionate
support of independence, abolition of slavery and equal education for
women. His first teacher, an Irish priest, introduced him to Gaelic.Excerpts from a Google search:

Varela fled
to New York, the first Cuban exile. There he eventually became Vicar General of
the New York Diocese. His special apostolate was to New York's recently arrived
Irish immigrants, who were as detested and persecuted in the 19th century as
Hispanics are today in this country. Varela built the first Catholic schools
for them (open to both sexes, for the first time); the first mutual aid
society; the first orphanages; and the first parish to cater to their spiritual
and material needs, in the notorious Five Corners section were most of them
lived. The Irish clamored for Varela to be their bishop, but Spain vetoed his
selection because Varela continued to agitate for Cuba's independence from New
York, creating, through his patriotic writings, a distinctive Cuban
consciousness and nationality. Martí himself journeyed to Varela's grave, then
in St. Augustine, FL, to pay homage to "the man who taught us to
think" and consecrate his work of liberation to him.

In 1837,
Varela was named Vicar General of
the Diocese
of New York, which then covered all of New York State
and the northern half of New Jersey. In this
post, he played a major role in the way the American Church dealt with the
tremendous influx of Irish refugees, which was just beginning at the time. His
desire to assist those in need coupled with his gift for languages allowed him
to master the Irish language in
order to communicate more efficiently with many of the recent Irish arrivals.

While in the
United States, Fr. Varela published newspapers and many articles on subjects
such as human rights, religious tolerance, education and the need for the
Spanish and English speaking communities to live in peace. In 1827, he
founded the Church of the Immigrant in the impoverished Five Points district of
Manhattan. Today, known as the Church of the Transfiguration, the parish
continues to serve many immigrants. Fr. Varela became renowned in New
York for his charitable works, his ministry to the ill during a cholera
epidemic, his ecumenical spirit and respect for non-Catholics, his great devotion
to the Mystical Body of Christ, and the missions he preached each year in
anticipation of the Feast of Corpus Christi.

In 1837, Fr. Varela was named Vicar General of the Diocese of New York, which
at that time included the entire state of New York and northern New Jersey, as
well. Proficient in languages, Fr. Varela learned the Irish language and
was instrumental in helping the Irish acclimate to their new country at the
beginning of the great migration of the Irish to the United States.

The Spanish
Governor in Havana, Francisco Vives, decided to apply Varela’s death sentence
in New York, dispatching one of his thugs, el tuerto (one-eyed) Morejón
of the Havana police to assassinate him. By that time Varela had built a loyal
following among his Irish parishioners, who were no friends of colonialists,
and they foiled the plot by warning Varela and intimidating the would-be
assassin. A one-eyed Spanish-speaking stranger wandering around an Irish
neighborhood in lower Manhattan would have been noticed. In any case, Morejón
returned to Havana, presumably without earning the 30,00o pesos Vives had
offered him.

Varela talks
about his support of Irish immigrants in 1800’s New York in “Choosing Peace”:

“I work hard
to help Irish families build schools for their children, and I tend cholera
patients, and I defend Irish American boys and girls against insults from mobs
who hate them just because their parents are immigrants.”

Two observations
from Hernán Guaracao, a major on line publisher for
the Latino community in Philadelphia, originally from Colombia. He brings
Varela into the present.

But his greatest achievement in life was not this advocacy for the
independence of his homeland, written out in that journalistic enterprise he
launched in Old City Philadelphia, but what he did in the following 30 years in
New York City, where he moved to lead a life of charity in defense of the
poorest of the poor, the undereducated immigrants coming to America in the
first half of the 19th century, mostly from an island called Ireland.
...
“No single Latino left a greater imprint on 19th century American culture than
Varela,” writes former Philadelphia Daily News writer and New
York Daily News columnist, Juan Gonzalez in his
book “Harvest of Empire.”

Does anybody remember the “Kensington Riots,” when the Catholic
Irish confronted the backlash of resistance to their presence they found in
Philadelphia in the 19th Century, either because they were poor, or they were
undereducated, or they were simply “different”, on top of being catholic,
exactly like a good number of Latinos are today?

The life of Father Felix Varela y Morales, when properly publicized and well
understood, can be a major point of reference to the current dilemmas of
immigration into the United States.

And it can be a call, from the shrine of the memory of a man one step away from
being declared a saint by the Catholic church, for the moral responsibility
many leaders with power and influence, some of Irish descent, must feel today.

In the profound immigration crisis of today, Varela life’s example can be just
an inspiration for action in view of the millions that have come and are now
trapped by obsolete laws that keep many on the run, or stigmatized because of
the negative images propagated by a society of immigrants that have been harsh
with their own kind.